Friday, March 13, 2009

Unasked Questions

The New York Times reports that my state of Connecticut is mulling restrictions on raw-milk sales after last summer's devastating E. coli outbreak which I never heard of before. The story, of course, had the requisite number of quotes from Concerned Parents:

Erin Barringer of West Hartford, whose daughter contracted E. coli from a child who drank raw milk, according to health officials, is helping to campaign for the stricter legislation. “It can be frustrating at times because I think everybody’s lost sight of who the victims are,” said Ms. Barringer, whose daughter, Emma, was 2 years and 10 months old when she got sick, even though she herself never drank raw milk.

This is indeed a tragic case, and nobody likes it when innocent toddlers suffer. But there's something this story doesn't address: E. coli is not airborne-contagious. So far as I know, it's spread mainly through the feces of infected animals and/or people. So what exactly did this little girl do, to come down with an E. coli infection?

If it's what I think it is, it was only a matter of time before the child came down with something nasty, raw-milk sales or no. Instead of lobbying the statehouse, maybe Erin Barringer should -- I dunno -- teach her daughter not to eat feces?

6 Comments:

smartass sob said...

So far as I know, it's spread mainly through the feces of infected animals and/or people. So what exactly did this little girl do, to come down with an E. coli infection?

Little children are notorious for unsanitary practices. I'd say she probably came in direct contact with poop, probably that of the other child. Sounds like someone either wasn't watching these children very closely or wasn't keeping them clean.

If it's what I think it is, it was only a matter of time before the child came down with something nasty, raw-milk sales or no.

Um ... something which in no way suggests that her mother is pushing this "think of the children" legislation in hope of suppressing the guilt feelings she'd experience if she had time to think, "If I kept a better eye on my daughter, maybe she wouldn't eat shit."

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Jennifer Abel is an American writer who began her career in print media three minutes before the Internet killed the industry. After starting at a small Connecticut daily she moved to the Hartford Advocate, an alt-weekly where her journalistic coups included infiltrating a Furries convention and working on a phone sex line (which fired her six hours later). Since then she’s written for, or been reprinted in, dozens of print and web outlets, including Playboy, the Guardian, Salon, AlterNet, Mashable, the Daily Dot and pretty much every website with the words "cannabis" or "legalize it" in the title. Once, when she was young and naïve and needed the money, she unwittingly edited SEO copy for a spammer. However, in light of the spambot comments she’s deleted from her own blogs since then, she figures she’s more than repaid that particular karmic debt. Jennifer is currently looking for professional, non-spam writing jobs; interested editors are enthusiastically invited to e-mail her.